MSE Massachusetts 4X - anyone?

[fscottee 10]

If anyone has Mass 4X would you be so kind to offer up a couple very low (50 -100 feet alt) shots of the Lowell, Massachusetts area? 

[fscottee 10]

Hmmm must be quite a popular scenery...

[fscottee 10]

I'm just looking for something like this, like around the Aiken St bridge for comparison.  228 ft alt.

 

[hjsmuc 260]

Hi fscottee, I don't have MSE Mass 4K but curious with what scenery you recorded the screenshot you posted.

[fscottee 10]

It's Bing at 60cm.    Working on a little scenery for the area and was wanting to see how MSE4x compared to Bing.

[hjsmuc 260]

Like that Bing shot. Looks more colorful to me than what I saw from MSE.

[tonywob 2,899]

I tried generating this tile in X-Plane using both Bing and USGS imagery (Which I think MSE uses). Bing is vastly superior in colour and contrast

[fscottee 10]

Ok thanks.  Would have saved me the time of doing water masking which I hate and will probably just leave it out.

[Christopher Low 2,483]

Do the MegaScenery Earth guys bother with watermasking? They certainly didn't with MSE2 Ireland.

[Clutch Cargo 226]

From what I have in the past they tend to watermask large bodies of water only.  So areas look good - some not so good. 

[SAAB340 28]

Think I managed to hover the Harrier to the correct spot. No slewing here  :smile:

This is what Massachusetts 4x looks like:

 

And if anyone is interested, this is what MSE Ultra-Res Boston looks like:

 

As you can see, it uses the same source data, but the water masking is different. Well, MSEs water masking until now has basically been to take the default vector data for the water and make the textures gradually transparent around that. That way they could through minimal work have the photo scenery textures blend in with the default water textures fairly nicely, however we also got horrible bleed through of the default ground textures around the water, but the join was fairly gradual. The x4 uses different vector data from default to make the textures see through for water, and they go from fully transparent to not transparent at all in a few feet instead of a few hundred feet.

 

 

Here is what the MSE2.0 Massachusetts look like:

 

We can clearly see that it uses different source data. And because that source data is a lot more washed out in color here, the default bleed through is absolutely horrible.

 

 

Finally here is the Default FSX scenery with autogen: 

 

If you save the images and blink between them its very clear where the default scenery is bleeding through.

[fscottee 10]

Thanks for posting those.  It's a shame that MSE can't just be honest about the resolution they advertise.  The MSE4X looks like 1 meter and the MSE2 looks like 1.5 meter.  The bing is 50cm, (but FSX only displays at 60 cm).

 

But the biggest indicator of resolution is the download size of the scenery.  ALl this stuff about special compression techniques are hogwash.  When you compress textures, you lose quality, period.  So if you compress 50 cm textures, they are no longer 50 cm.

[SAAB340 28]

Yeah, that Bing scenery of yours is way better resolution, regardless of colors. So it is using the same LOD level as the MSE x4. Interesting.

 

The MSE UltraRes is actually slightly crisper compared to MSE x4 if you disregard the extra bleed through of default scenery here. If you look closer in the white lines in the red (is it a park?) in the top middle its clear that UltraRes is slightly better detail. It's clearly based on the same source so it must be that "optimised" 2x compression that is showing its ugly face. 

 

I'm no developer and don't know much about scenery scale but is the actual scale we see not depending on the latitude we are at? The textures are saved at a certain LOD level and the LOD level UltraRes and x4 scenery have gives a scale between about 70cm per pixel down in Key West and about 50cm per pixel up in northern Minnesota?

[SlowFlyer 15]

Just from judging the screenshots in this thread, the Bing screenshot looks amazing to me. The Bing photo to me virtually looks to have a great 3-D effect; with its clearly defined shadows, the bright colors, and higher resolution. 

I would consider buying photo scenery if it looked like the Bing screenshot.

 

Although I like the idea of "real" scenery and being able to identify the area I live in, the washed out look, the blurry images that even MSE 4X offers, doesn't 'totally' interest me, but I since I live in Massachusetts, I have been looking at it.

[Clutch Cargo 226]

The Bing looks like 30cm to me